Bad News for Brainwork
by TheMidnightOwl
Summary: Sherlock Holmes is fresh out of University, living on his own. His beautiful mind at this point in his life is as much a curse to him as it is a blessing. With nothing to effectively distract his thoughts and keep them from tearing his mind apart, he has to seek alternative methods of calming them down. One-shot. Trigger warning: drug abuse.


Bad News for Brainwork

His breaths come out in uneasy huffs. Sometimes he recognizes them, sometimes he ignores them. They aren't important. Breathing is boring. What use is it against the noise in his head?

The noise. It's louder tonight. It's always loud, but it seems especially desperate for his attention. He isn't crazy. No, just the opposite. He is absolutely brilliant. One of the best minds to grace this fleeting existence. He abhors the idea of his mortality, especially when reminded of the morons running the world. He could do all of their jobs at once and do them better. Maybe he should; it would certainly mute the noise most effectively.

I am better, he reminds himself. _At what?_ He can hear their cynical voices questioning him in his head. "Everything," he forces aloud through gritted teeth. The sound is painful. He is in pain. The noise; the noise is constant.

Everywhere colors dance behind his eyes as they observe his flat. Unfortunately, his surroundings being so familiar, they hardly help in silencing the noise. Dust collecting on books he has not read in a while. A mug on the coffee table with the handle turned to the right; the user was right handed. His hands had been trembling when he set the mug down, evident from the little uneven sloshing patterns inside the rim where the dark liquid had been disturbed. Dark color meant he had not taken milk with his coffee. Of course he had not taken milk with his coffee. He only took milk with his tea. Not enough to observe in here. Not enough to drown out those colors dancing on his retinas, trying desperately to find some sort of relief for his racing thoughts.

His index and middle fingers leap to his throat to find his pulse, both beginning to quiver. He counts the _patter patter patter _of the hurried rhythm under his neck as he watches the clock. 144. His blood pressure is likely worse. He's breathing too fast, bordering on hyperventilation. Flooding his cells with oxygen will make him pass out. Unconsciousness is boring too. He hates being bored more than he hates the incompetence of the world's leaders.

His fingers wrap around one of the syringes in the small wooden box built in to one of the legs of the coffee table. Removing the cap with his teeth, he rubs the alabaster skin of his left arm, littered with remnants of other nights just like this one, where the noise was too much to handle. No need to tie off his arm to find the vein; he is pale enough to see it clearly. Two flicks to the body of the needle and a minor expulsion of the mind-numbing fluid to ensure no air embolisms form in his bloodstream, and then the needle is piercing his skin. When he feels the intrusion within his rapid pulse, he pushes the barrel down, freeing the saving grace into his blood. He feels its relieving effects almost instantly. Tonight is a bad one.

Slowly, the colors stop dancing, the noises slur and drown out, and his surroundings lose their importance. Colors fade to muted tones. Any sensory input is blocked from his conscious mind. His fluttering, pounding heart relaxes, and his breathing returns to its usual dull rhythm. The leveling out takes a little longer than usual, but still qualifies as instant relief to him.

One of the issues with depressing his nervous system on an empty stomach is that it can, on occasion, confuse his processing of reality. Eating is one of those habits he does not enjoy divulging in, like sleeping. Digestion slows his thoughts. He needs to think. So he only eats when necessary. Perhaps he should have eaten first. It hardly makes a difference. And it's boring. The skull on the mantelpiece seems made of mercury; part of the mandible now lay drooped over the edge of the shelf. Had he rested it too close to the edge again? No, he's certain after his last conversation with his deceased friend (well, he says friend) that he returned him to his usual position. So why is the damn thing drooping? The bills he had secured to the mantel by driving a knife through them were drooping too. Suddenly his mind was a Dalí painting.

"Dalí," he mumbles, the word slurred and uninteresting. He can bring up an encyclopedia-worthy arsenal of information on Salvador Dalí in his head, complete with a library of all the paintings he knows by him. If he wanted to, that is. Normally he wouldn't have been able to stop the thoughts from forming anyway, but now he doesn't have to listen to them. The noise is muted. No more of his thoughts rushing about without his approval. His mind can be, for the next few hours, what he wants it to be. What he wants it to be is quiet. No more thinking for one day; he's properly exhausted. Three days since he last slept. He may as well take a nap now before he has to worry about the onset of a coma. Even with his mind numbed he cannot stand the thought of sleeping for that long. How utterly dull to lose so much time to nothingness.

The thoughts are still fighting against the hazy effects to make themselves known. They want to play. They want input. Information and observations; they want them _now. _His brain craves stimulation. He does too, just not right now. He wants a break.

He laughs. Laughs at the idea of the idiots wanting a break. Laughs at their reasons for doing what he does. He poisons himself to survive. They do it for fun. Or, if Freud was right, and he likes Freud, because they aspire towards death more heavily than others. Idiots, all of them. They know nothing. Even when overly stimulated on caffeine and Adderall they still cannot observe, cannot form the most basic of deductions based on what's in front of them. They always need it spelled out for them. His mind is sharper. He elects to numb it because if he doesn't he'll claw it out with his fingernails. The world of morons is one lacking in sufficient stimulation to keep his mind happy. So he keeps it manageable by shutting it up. They're just pathetic.

A smile forms on his face as his eyelids start to feel heavier. Huh, that's abnormal. He looks at the syringe in his hand. Bigger than some of the others, means there was more in it. Grinning, he lets it slip from his fingers. What does he care? It's working. He'll just sleep. Even in this state, he's still probably smarter than Anderson. He laughs again. He only just met the feeble-minded sniffer dog of Scotland Yard, and despite his seemingly impressive credentials, he had still done the forensic investigator's job better with half as much time on the scene. Detective Inspector Lestrade will not be happy he had dosed himself again, but what can the man do, really? Needle marks are insufficient proof of anything without a drug test, and he knew all the tricks to those. The images of the halfwits in his mind are drooping, just like the skull on his mantel. Made of mercury. At the moment, so are his neurons.

Something wet tickles his lip as the room around him starts to fade black. He touches the tip of his finger to it, and holds it in front of his face. Red. There's blood dripping from his mouth. What does it matter? He can't hear the incessant noise. The darkness envelopes more of his vision, like a drop of dye in a glass of water. As he succumbs to the relaxing void, his arm slackens by his side, and the droplet of blood falls to the hardwood floor. Just a drip. He may not even notice it when he awakens. But contained in that tiny droplet is the code for his entire existence. Not chaos, not mayhem or chance. Just genetic perfection trapped in a life of flaws.

* * *

**Wrote this originally for my Humanities class. Made it a fanfiction because what the hell else do you write for classes. Decided I liked it enough to tweak it into the references being less subtle. The imagery described is inspired by the following paintings: "Persistence of Memory" by Salvador Dali, "Number 1" by Jackson Pollock, and "Thrust" by Adolph Gottlieb. Please leave any thoughts. Thanks so much for reading! **


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